The Key to Our Victory over Sin
00:00:00.000 | Well, today marks the birthday of Augustine.
00:00:06.480 | The church father was born on this date, November 13, back in the year 354.
00:00:12.140 | He was, of course, the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa.
00:00:16.080 | And his story of conversion and spiritual awakening is laid out in a book under the
00:00:19.700 | title The Confessions, a classic memoir enjoyed today in over a dozen available English translations.
00:00:27.320 | That book and all of his books have left a permanent impact on the Reformation tradition
00:00:31.200 | and specifically on John Piper and this movement we call Christian Hedonism.
00:00:36.700 | When Augustine was in his 70s, he went toe-to-toe with a nemesis named Pelagius, a freewill
00:00:43.320 | theologian in Britain.
00:00:45.600 | Here's the backstory and why it matters today from John Piper's 1998 biographic message
00:00:51.200 | on Augustine.
00:00:52.960 | My assumption is that too much Reformed thinking and preaching and worship in our day has not
00:01:01.180 | penetrated to the root of how grace actually triumphs through joy in believers' lives.
00:01:14.480 | And therefore, our Reformed thinking and writing and preaching and worshiping is only half
00:01:23.440 | Augustinian and half biblical and half beautiful.
00:01:29.200 | It isn't beautiful to people.
00:01:31.200 | Now let me try to unpack that.
00:01:34.080 | Pelagius was a British monk who lived in Rome.
00:01:38.380 | He was there when it was sacked.
00:01:39.680 | He had to leave.
00:01:41.720 | He taught, "Though grace may facilitate the achieving of righteousness, it is not necessary
00:01:51.720 | to that end."
00:01:53.540 | Grace is not necessary to making right choices.
00:01:58.040 | He did not believe in the doctrine of original sin and he believed that human nature was
00:02:03.140 | at its core irreducibly good and we are able to do everything we are commanded to do.
00:02:12.960 | And therefore, Pelagius and Augustine were on a collision course because when he read
00:02:19.040 | the Confessions, this sentence infuriated him.
00:02:23.560 | "Give me the grace, O Lord, to do as you command and command me to do what you will.
00:02:33.140 | O holy God, when your commands are obeyed, it is from you that we receive the power to
00:02:42.980 | obey them."
00:02:44.660 | Well Pelagius went ballistic at this sentence because it was an assault on human goodness.
00:02:51.980 | It was an assault on the freedom of the will.
00:02:54.460 | In his judgment it was therefore an assault on responsibility and the whole moral fabric
00:02:59.660 | of the world would unravel if Augustine had his way in this assessment of his own conversion
00:03:06.440 | and experience with God.
00:03:09.660 | Well now Augustine had not come to this conviction quickly, namely that anything good he does
00:03:15.740 | is a gift from God.
00:03:17.940 | He had not arrived there quickly.
00:03:20.260 | I walked into a bookstore at Hope College and saw the book by Augustine on the freedom
00:03:26.820 | of the will.
00:03:27.820 | I said, "Oh good, I've got a lecture on this in a year."
00:03:29.740 | So I picked it up and started reading it.
00:03:31.860 | I said, "Yowie, what is this?
00:03:34.380 | I don't want a lecture on this."
00:03:40.880 | He wrote that book four years after his conversion and radically changed his mind from what that
00:03:50.140 | book says.
00:03:51.140 | So be careful claiming what Augustine thinks about this or that.
00:03:59.500 | When he wrote his confessions he had settled the matter differently and deeply and unchangeably
00:04:08.140 | in his own mind.
00:04:11.780 | This paragraph that I'm about to read here in my judgment for me and my theology and
00:04:19.100 | my ministry and my life is the most important paragraph I've ever read in Augustine.
00:04:24.620 | Here it is.
00:04:27.900 | During all those years, where was my free will?
00:04:35.060 | What was the hidden secret place from which it was summoned in a moment so that I might
00:04:42.280 | bend my neck to your easy yoke?
00:04:46.300 | How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once
00:04:54.780 | feared to lose.
00:04:57.380 | You drove them from me.
00:05:02.500 | You who are the true, the sovereign joy.
00:05:10.300 | You drove them from me and you took their place.
00:05:16.260 | You who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to the flesh and blood.
00:05:22.220 | You who outshine all light, yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts.
00:05:29.540 | You who surpass all honor, though not in the eyes of men who see all honor in themselves.
00:05:36.340 | Oh Lord, my God, my light, my wealth, my salvation.
00:05:44.100 | There's a theology in that quote.
00:05:47.180 | It's called Christian hedonism.
00:05:50.180 | I call it Christian hedonism.
00:05:51.660 | Nobody else calls it Christian hedonism.
00:05:54.420 | And you don't have to call it Christian hedonism, but I hope you believe it.
00:05:59.940 | You drove them from me.
00:06:04.460 | You are the true, the sovereign joy.
00:06:09.220 | Now there's the missing piece in contemporary Reformed preaching.
00:06:18.500 | Augustine's understanding of grace is this.
00:06:23.900 | Grace is God's giving us sovereign joy in God that triumphs over the joy of sin.
00:06:36.220 | That's grace in the thought of Augustine.
00:06:39.460 | I'll say it again.
00:06:41.220 | Grace is God's giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over the joy in sin.
00:06:55.180 | In other words, God works deep in the human heart to transform the springs of joy so that
00:07:03.300 | we love God more than we love sex or anything else.
00:07:08.340 | Now Mark, here's another problem with contemporary American Christianity.
00:07:14.300 | Loving God in Augustine's mind is never reduced to deeds of obedience or acts of willpower.
00:07:26.840 | How common that is in our day.
00:07:30.940 | Love is commanded so it can't be an emotion.
00:07:34.660 | Love is an act of will.
00:07:36.260 | Love is obedience to God.
00:07:40.860 | Oh for Augustine in our day.
00:07:45.380 | Here's his definition of the love of God.
00:07:47.620 | I call charity the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for his own sake and
00:07:58.740 | the enjoyment of oneself and one's neighbor for the sake of God.
00:08:05.980 | Joy is the essence of love.
00:08:10.060 | And for American Christianity it's a caboose.
00:08:15.060 | No wonder our reformed thinking and preaching is unappealing.
00:08:23.020 | We don't get grace.
00:08:27.060 | Grace is the giving of a sovereign joy that triumphs over all competitors.
00:08:34.100 | Loving God for Augustine is always conceived essentially as delighting in God above all
00:08:41.260 | things and in other things for the sake of God.
00:08:47.220 | He loves thee too little, O God, who loves anything together with thee which he loves
00:08:53.500 | not for thy sake.
00:08:56.860 | That is a revolutionary sentence.
00:09:00.180 | I read that years ago and it just blew me away.
00:09:06.140 | I like my wife.
00:09:10.780 | She's here somewhere.
00:09:12.420 | I like Talisa.
00:09:15.180 | I could idolize my family.
00:09:18.740 | My four boys are a treasure to me.
00:09:22.740 | And better that they die than that I love them more than God or love them for any reason
00:09:31.380 | but for God's sake.
00:09:33.300 | That's Augustinianism at its core.
00:09:37.780 | Now Augustine analyzed his own motives down to the root.
00:09:42.420 | He saw this as a universal.
00:09:45.180 | Every man, he said, that's a quote, this is not John Piper.
00:09:50.380 | This is Augustine.
00:09:53.820 | Every man whatsoever his condition desires to be happy.
00:09:59.080 | There is no man who does not desire this and each one desires it with such earnestness
00:10:06.940 | and that he prefers it to all other things.
00:10:11.740 | Whoever in fact desires other things desires them for this end.
00:10:19.060 | And this desire, this delight, this longing for happiness governs the will.
00:10:26.260 | Now here's the catch.
00:10:28.380 | The delight that the will always follows we do not determine.
00:10:38.140 | And Pelagius smelled it and hated it.
00:10:42.620 | Here's the quote from Augustine.
00:10:45.660 | Who has it in his power to have such a motive present to his mind that his will shall be
00:10:52.940 | influenced to believe?
00:10:55.060 | Who can welcome in his mind something which does not give him delight?
00:11:01.940 | But who has it in his power to ensure that something will delight him will turn up?
00:11:08.820 | Or that he will delight in what does turn up?
00:11:13.260 | If those things delight us which serve our advancement towards God, that is due not to
00:11:20.660 | our own whim or industry or meritorious works, but to the inspiration of God and to the grace
00:11:28.980 | which He bestows.
00:11:32.800 | In other words, converting, saving grace is God's giving delight in God, holiness, Christ,
00:11:45.200 | scripture, the beauty of holiness and glory.
00:11:49.800 | Suddenly you see and love and cherish and revel and long for them.
00:12:00.200 | Where'd that come from?
00:12:02.520 | Now the will will move with it.
00:12:05.280 | But before that's given, the will's going back to the internet and the magazine and
00:12:13.680 | the concubine and the television and the family.
00:12:19.400 | Now picture this.
00:12:20.400 | He's 72.
00:12:21.400 | You're supposed to retire at 65.
00:12:28.360 | You don't take on Pelagius at 70, which he did.
00:12:37.080 | And Paulinus, his friend, said, "Augustine, why?
00:12:41.200 | You're an old man.
00:12:42.880 | Lay it down."
00:12:45.600 | That's my paraphrase.
00:12:47.960 | But here's a non-paraphrase answer quoted from Augustine.
00:12:52.080 | Why?
00:12:53.080 | "First and foremost, because no subject gives me greater pleasure.
00:13:01.840 | For what ought to be more attractive to us sick men than grace, grace by which we are
00:13:09.880 | healed?
00:13:11.680 | For us lazy men than grace, grace by which we are stirred up?
00:13:18.840 | For us men longing to act than grace by which we are helped?"
00:13:26.760 | Now what makes that answer so compelling and so powerful is that the healing, stirring,
00:13:33.280 | helping, enabling grace, I call it future grace, is the giving of a compelling, triumphant
00:13:41.760 | joy.
00:13:44.280 | Grace governs life.
00:13:46.780 | And the life of a 70-year-old man, by giving a supreme joy in the supremacy of God and
00:13:55.480 | His glory and His sufficiency and His beauty and His treasure, which triumphs over all
00:14:00.680 | other things.
00:14:01.680 | And when you see a Pelagius coming along, undermining that grace and that gift, even
00:14:10.040 | at 70, you go to battle.
00:14:12.680 | An incredible story.
00:14:14.240 | Happy birthday to Augustine.
00:14:16.080 | This is taken from John Piper's 1998 biographic message titled, "The Swan is Not Silent,
00:14:21.440 | Sovereign Joy in the Life and Thought of St. Augustine."
00:14:24.480 | You can find the entire message at DesiringGod.org.
00:14:27.400 | It's one of my favorites.
00:14:29.120 | And it's a message that has a paragraph in it that inspired me to write a whole book
00:14:33.080 | of my own, The Joy Project.
00:14:34.640 | I know some of you have read it.
00:14:37.000 | It all comes out of this message, really, was the germ, the seed that grew into that
00:14:42.360 | book.
00:14:43.360 | Well, to all of you Augustinians out there, thank you for listening along and for subscribing
00:14:46.920 | to the Ask Pastor John podcast in your favorite app or in YouTube.
00:14:50.440 | We really appreciate you listening along.
00:14:53.260 | Next time, we look at whether or not we will pray in heaven.
00:14:57.600 | Will we pray in heaven?
00:14:58.760 | It's a shrewd question.
00:15:00.760 | Coming up next, I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:15:02.200 | We'll see you on Friday.
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